info

support

wicket

security

test

Introduction

The utilities library consists of software to support development of Java and in
particular Java EE applications. I started this in 2005 when I realized that it would be
very nice to have a support library readily available instead of having to cut and paste
from old code.

There are many purposes for this documentation:

To allow others to use this library.

To allow myself to use the library(!). This is because I have written a lot of stuff in
the past and need to make sure I have good enough documentation describing what I have
made and how to use it.

To document the current state of development. In particular, some parts may be
deprecated because of other developments).

To allow extension of the library.

See the links on the left side for information about various components of the utilities
library.

Philosopy

Some parts in the utilities library may seem familiar to users of other popular frameworks
such as Spring and Guice. This is not always a coincidence.
It is my view that there many good IOC
frameworks but that it is not a good idea to tie into any one of them
specifically. Also, the support that one actually needs to develop applications and in
particular enterprise applications efficiently only requires a few basic support utilities
and typically not a big framework. Therefore, you will find a couple of small
utilities that may be familiar in the functionality they offer to what is found
in other frameworks.

Apart from this, there are many other interesting developments going on:

Java EE 6 dependency injection: Java EE 6 provides a powerful dependency
injection framework called Contexts and
Dependency Injection (CDI), that contains a lot of experience from proven frameworks
such as Spring and Guice. In particular, I think CDI can be viewed as a standardization of
Guice (although some people might disagree). This, in effect, should make anyone think
twice before depending heavily on a 3rd party IOC framework instead of using CDI.

Lightweight component technologies: Integration of lightweight component
technologies such as OSGI and Java EE is under way which
will also shift the balance. In effect, the enterprise spec for OSGI was released March
23rd 2010 and Glassfish V3 is already partly using it.

In particular, I believe that Java EE 6 with new powerful concepts such as singleton
beans, lifecycle management, Contexts and Dependency Injection, used in combination with Enterprise OSGI will
provide the most powerful way to develop applications in the future. In this. I am making
only an exception for web frameworks to which I think JSF is not a good solution. I would
use Wicket anyday if it were up to me.